Redeploying our forces to win World War IV

If the United States is going to win the world war against terrorism, it must base its forces where they are most needed, and build next-generation aircraft and ships to move them faster than ever.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon have correctly determined that, if the US is to project power in remote regions of the world, American forces must move out of their huge and comfortable golf-green garrisons at home and in foreign lands that served well during the Cold War, and into Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines.

To make the most of such forward operating bases, however, the armed forces will require new, transformational technologies that allow the U.S. to dispatch forces to and through these distant locations. Since such bases will, by design, be relatively austere, a premium will be placed on those platforms that can utilize less-developed infrastructures and facilities.

One such technology — the V-22 tiltrotor — passed a critical developmental milestone last week, largely clearing the way for its entry into the Marine Corps and Special Forces inventories.

The Wall Street Journal recently featured another promising new technology: a new high-speed catamaran that can alleviate one of the most serious impediments to implementing the Rumsfeld strategy: shortfalls in America’s sealift capabilities.

According to the Journal, the Bollinger/Incat Wave-Piercing Catamaran is capable of ferrying “enough equipment to support about 5,000 soldiers” — including Army and Marine Corps tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and helicopters, as well as significant numbers of troops — over distances of “2,000 miles in less than 48 hours.” Its shallow draft allows it to operate in littorals and under-developed ports in many theaters of interest in the war on terror.

Re-deploying US forces, combined with production of transformational systems like the Osprey and the Wave-Piercing Catamaran, are vital to winning future phases of the present global conflict, what former CIA Director and Center for Security Policy National Advisory Advisory Council Chairman R. James Woolsey properly has dubbed ‘World War IV.’